First, would like to thank all that I’ve found in the posts and tutorials that have been posted here. I started playing with Blender 2 months ago, and have learned a lot to date.
I’m at a point now where I’m playing with the animations (they’re starting to get smoother, as I play more and more with it), but have run into something I haven’t been able to figure out yet. And I apologize if it has been asked before. But to date, I have not been able to find an answer.
One of the projects I’m playing with has the camera focused on a piece of “paper”, upon which I’m trying to get the mannequin to write. (The camera is positioned such that it would be from the mannequin’s point of view, looking at the paper).
The mannequin is holding a pen, and I have some of the rudimentary actions recorded for the arm and pen movements. I’d prefer to have script (writing) appear on the paper, rather than block letters (printing). Does anyone have a suggestion how I might be able to accomplish this?
You could use curves as a path . Of course this means a lot of curve editing (personally I would not enjoy this ) .
create an empty . select you pen and make it the child of the empty .
create a curve . edit it into cursive letters . edit PathLen (set to 100 by default) and set CurvePath on .
make the empty the child of the curve : context menu -> choose follow path .
snap the empty to the starting point of the curve . insert keyframe at frame 1 . you probably want to select both location and rotation for later IPO editing .
That’s the basics of it but since I don’t know how you’ve rigged your arm etc. can’t be more specific then this .
You could put a small particle emitter at the tip of the pencil. Give the particles a long lifetime and leave all the velocity settings at 0. The pen will leave trails even if it leaves the paper so you have to time the particle emission carefully.
Hi!
The best way seems to use a curve modifier applied on a long mesh like a ribbon. Your ribbon will follow the curve like the trace of your pencil.
You will only have to move the ribbon on one axis by an Ipo, and use it to parent an empty by Vertex parenting, to make a target that you will use for the track constraint of the pencil.
Philippe.
Note: In Blender 2. um… 36 I think and greater you have the option to keep particles that have reached the end of their life showing. In the particle buttons, the option is called “Show Died” or something similar.
So you only need a very short life for the ink to flow from the pen to the page.
The pen I currently defined is parented to the hand bone. Not the most elegant solution, but it is following the movement perfectly. I’m going to try modifying it to be more like this one and see what kind of difference it makes.
you guys are SOOOOOO exact. My idea: FAKE IT! First, texture the paper with the writing on it. Make a cover that covers up the line and make that a child of the arm target. Make his hand go up and down, cyclic repeat, so he looks like he’s scribbling something. Move his arm left to right. As he moves it, it moves a child cover colored the same as the paper, revealing the writing underneath. Thus, it looks like he is writing as the writing appears from under his scribbling hand.
texture stencil is a good idea too, but involves animating texture displacement or stencil anim etc which is kinda hard to set up…
or he could do an animated alpha map instead of a stencil, on top of the writing tex…
or you could hide (position) the text (using a script font, of course), just beneath the paper, and raise it up through the paper as he writes
or closing in the camera real tight on his hand, and popping all the text up, just that the camera does not reveal the writing until his hand has passed over it, and the camera backs away as his hand moves to the right, keeping his hand frame edge right so as to not reveal the illusion.
I hope that the blend file will be self explanatory. It isnot a complicated method.
The Empty is Vertex Parented to the strip mesh used for the Ink text, and used to move the pen with a Copy Location constraint (Parent relationship doesn’t work well on Empty moved by curve deform).
The curve is set to 3D to allow hiding the starting part of the text mesh under the table surface.
Philippe.
very nice. good job. i bet the anim looks kinda spooky like the invisible man or a ghost has possessed the pen. Imagine it writing GET OUT on the wall…in red, or course.
I started setting up a scene with your method, and it’s not going a whole lot faster than a particle setup Synchronizing the “blanker” sheet to make it look good / realistic writing is not that easy. Also if you try to do something where the paper is small, and sitting on a table with a different color, I can’t figure out how to make the “blanker” move / resize smoothly without becoming visible (contrast with the desktop).
I’ll post the finished blend / animation when I complete it, why don’t you demonstrate what you had in mind
That’s how I did an animation of a pen writing a check. I created a path describing the pen path and childed the ink and the pen to it. To control the width and the appearance of the ink, I used a small black plane childed to my emitter.
blanker is shape keyed. Duplicate the paper, set material to single user. raise it a smidge above the paper. shape key as basis frame 1. Insert another key, and edit the blanker to a narrow strip on the right. Set influence of 1 at frame 30.
Hi!
I just remember of a way of making a hand writing effect on a video that will be usable as an animated texture.
You will be able to use this AVI texture in blender.
There is a cool free software provided by Wondertouch, the company who sells Particle Illusion 3.0.
Here is a link to the page where Gloodle can be downloaded : http://www.wondertouch.com/gloodle.asp
Gloodle can do very interesting visual effects, using sprites. You can create your own sprites, and write with them in real time on your screen, making amazing figures.
If you create a simple round dot and use it to draw, you will be able to write as well on the screen and create your hand writing effect.
It is just an alternative way of doing the thing, but you will probably enjoy Gloodle for itself, because it is fun, and I guess that you will find some applications for it, like intro sequences.
Philippe.
) .
